Case Study: Aiding A Cardiff NHS Trust To Recruit IT Staff Despite Strict Pay Bandings

The client’s challenge…

Organisations that struggle to hire highly skilled IT talent will often look to increase their compensation packages to attract a wider pool of professionals. However, in the NHS, as with much of the public sector, that is generally not an option.

This NHS Trust was unable to increase the salaries for the development and data skillsets they required for important on-going digital transformation projects. The salaries were hindering the NHS Trust IT department’s ability to secure skilled and experienced professionals who would contribute to making the projects successful.

We were introduced to this Trust following a referral made by another NHS Trust local to the Cardiff area, that we had successfully supported during the pandemic. This NHS Trust chose to engage our team due to our proven experience in navigating NHS hiring processes and recruiting skilled IT talent to the public sector.

Our actions…

Due to our previous extensive work with another local NHS Trust, we had a solid understanding of the tech landscape in the Cardiff area. We had already developed key market insights into the local IT talent pools, average salaries in the area, and the main competitors in the region.

As salary and compensation packages were a major issue in why this Trust was unable to effectively hire and retain tech talent, we advised the Trust that we would only focus on sourcing talent local to Cardiff. They had previously engaged with skilled candidates based 100+ miles away in previous recruitment campaigns, however, the higher commuting costs made the job proposition unattractive for many professionals.

We already had a database of over 5,000 passive and active candidates based in Cardiff, in part, due to the work we had done with the previous NHS Trust near Cardiff. However, many of these professionals only engaged in contract and temporary project work. Therefore, we began several outreach campaigns to the candidates in our databases to gauge their interest in working with this NHS Trust in a permanent capacity and requested referrals for other suitable permanent tech professionals.

Additionally, we knew that the most effective way we could attract professionals to these roles, was by gaining a deep understanding of the positive impact of the digital transformation projects the candidates would be working on. This way, we could communicate the social benefits that the projects had on the local community and attract more candidates. We met with the senior IT leadership team in-person in order to understand how the projects the new hires would be working on would create real change in the local community.

By highlighting this purpose-driven work to the candidates, we identified IT talent who aligned with the Trust’s mission and culture. We even found professionals who were willing to take minor salary decreases because they wanted to work somewhere where they felt like they were making a difference.

The outcomes…

As a result of our extensive work curating key market insights and a database of local Cardiff IT talent, we successfully supported the Trust in hiring 4 professionals across their data and development teams. 75% of the candidates that we sourced and presented to the Trust were successfully selected for the interview stage, which showcases our knowledge of what the Trust was looking for.

Over this period, we have built a strong partnership with this Trust, and they continue to engage us for their workforce needs. Furthermore, we have maintained a consistent presence on-site, visiting the Trust regularly to further build upon our close relationship and provide in-person support to the leadership team. These on-site visits have enabled our consultants to have a comprehensive insight into the Trust’s workforce needs and challenges and ensure a seamless onboarding process for all new hires.